The 





Class3Jt-425 

Book SM- 

Copyright^" . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The 

Master Secret 



BY 

ALBERT BOYNTON STORMS 



t 



Cincinnati: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 
New York: EATON & MAINS 






COPYRIGHT, I913, BY 
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 



^■aA3o710 2 



Contents 



PAGE 

I. The Master Secret, .... 9 

II. The Master Motive, - . - 26 

III. The Master Word, • . . . 3S 

IV. Vision and Task, - . - - 51 

V. An Ancient Psalm of Life, - - 64 

VI. Christianity and the Supernat- 
ural, 84 



Foreword 

If the Christian revelation had no other 
consequence than to impress us that in the 
sight of Heaven all that is essentially hu- 
man is infinitely precious, that result alone 
would leave the Christian religion of ines- 
timable value to the world. 

Could any teaching be more explicit 
than the teaching of Jesus upon this mat- 
ter? *^The very hairs of your head are 
numbered. Fear not, ye are of more value 
than many sparrows,'' and **not one of 
them is forgotten in the sight of God." 
Jesus took a ''little child and set him in the 
midst" of His disciples, and from the 
child taught at once the simplest and the 
deepest truth — the ultimate worth in the 
sight of God of unspoiled human trust and 
human love. Humanity becomes skeptical 
as to its own worthfulness, and cynical and 
cruel. Jesus brings us back to an apprecia- 
tion of the value of whatever is essentially 
human. In contrast with the cynical in- 
difference with which pharisaical hardness 
5 



FOREWORD 

of heart looked upon a ''woman that was a 
sinner/* Jesus with chivalrous courtesy 
and delicacy lifted into esteem for evermore 
the value of a person. Humanity can 
never forget His word, ''Neither do I 
condemn thee; go and sin no more/' 

The watchword of humanity in its 
progress towards the light of a new day is 
taken from the lips of Jesus, "Ye are of 
. • . value/' 

There is no argument for the greatness 
of man like the fact of the greatness of his 
need. The humblest of men, kicked and 
buffeted by his fellows and by his fate, 
little esteemed, and finding it difficult to 
lift his head in self-respect, nevertheless 
needs for the satisfaction of his life, truth 
and immortality, love and God. His need 
has imperial proportions. Nothing less 
than Heaven and divinity can appease his 
hunger of soul. No values less than eternal 
can satisfy him. 

Some years in the ministry and other 
years in contact with student life in college 
work have led me through an increasingly 
sympathetic study of the "problem of 
human life'' to appreciate the incomparable 
6 



FOREWORD 

value of the method of the Master in dis- 
covering the values of life. 

In part the thoughts contained in these 
pages have found expression in college 
chapel talks and in the pulpit of Central 
Avenue Church. The reception they have 
there received leads me to hope tiiat they 
may find an equally generous and kindly 
reception by the larger audience to which 
they are now addressed. 

One chapter, ^'An Ancient Psalm of 
Life/* takes up an Old Testament char- 
acter and a psalm as shov/ing the funda- 
mental harmony between the old and new 
dispensations. 

The chapter on ** Christianity and the 
Supernatural" is republished by permis- 
sion from the Methodist Review. 

Albert Boynton Storjvis. 
Central Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, 

Indianapolis, Ind. 



The Master Secret 



The Master Secret 

"All alone — alone, 
God shall speak to thee out of the sky. 

The years will bring us hastening to their goal, 
A little more of calmness, and of trust, 
With still the old, old doubt of death and dust, 

And still the expectancy within the soul. 

O Father, as we go to meet the years. 

We ask not joy that fame or pleasure brings. 
But some calm knowledge of the sum of 
things — 

A hint of gloi*y glimmering over tears; 

That he, who walks with sanction from Thy hand 
Some token of its presence may have seen. 
Beneath which we may tread the path serene 

xUto the stillness of the unknown land." (Sill.) 

" I have trodden the winepress alone." — Isaiah 
63: 3. 

This is the cry of a soul that reaches us 
out of the far past. **I have trodden the 
wine press alone.'' The cry has in it the 
pathos of a great sorrow, and strikes the 
9 



THE MASTER SECRET 

deepest chord in the human heart. A 
human voice, rich and resonant, may 
awaken sympathetic response from the 
chords of a harp, thus creating its own ac- 
companiment. And so the appeal of a 
noble grief is profound and universal. 

It is one of the paradoxes of life that 
Sorrow, which we treat as an enemy, from 
which we shrink, and which we seek to 
banish, counting ourselves happy only 
when Sorrow is absent — that unwelcome 
Sorrow is yet the angel that opens the 
heart to life's most precious treasures. 

The memory of a great sorrow is cher- 
ished. 

The literature that is immortal strikes 
this deep note. Priam's grief as sung by 
Homer, David's lament for his son, Riz- 
pah's sleepless vigilance as she frightened 
away the beasts of prey in the night and 
the vultures by day in her lonely watch 
upon the rock of Gilboa, where her sons 
hung in judicial expiation for the sins of 
Saul; Job's soul-cry in the anguish of un- 
certainty as to the goodness of God, never 
lose the power of their appeal to the human 
heart. It is the appeal of Sorrow. ''Deep 
calleth unto deep." 

10 



THE MASTER SECRET 

The vision recorded in Isaiah is set in 
the time of the captivity. No people ever 
identified themselves with the ideals and 
the future of their nation more absolutely 
than the Hebrews. That the citizen ex- 
isted for the State was a familiar and a 
commanding idea among the ancients. 
The Greek found his personal worthful- 
ness, his individual definition, in his citi- 
zenship. Apart from his city or his State 
he would have lost significance. He lived 
for the State. There was an elegance, a 
splendor about Greek patriotism that has 
never been equaled elsewhere. The Ro- 
man, too, with his stoical devotion to the 
State as the embodiment of law and au- 
thority, developed a patriotism not unlike 
that of the modern Japanese. Patriotism 
thus becomes a kind of stern religion. The 
individual counts not his life dear unto 
himself if its sacrifice will add to the glory 
of the State or help to maintain and to 
vindicate the political ideals of his State. 
Modern Western peoples have developed a 
similar passionate patriotism for the State 
as the expression of the ideals of liberty. 

The Hebrews, the race chosen to bring 
to humanity its noblest religious ideas, 
11 



THE MASTER SECRET 

the race with a genius for God, conceived 
the State as a theocracy. Jehovah was 
their super-sovereign. And Jehovah had 
a great purpose to be achieved through His 
chosen people. The humblest Hebrew 
shared in the glory of the divine purpose. 
Through this people God was to shine upon 
the nations. Inevitably they came to 
identify the national life, the stability and 
power of their government with the in- 
tegrity and strength of the divine purpose. 
To them it was incredible that their nation 
should not be preserved. Their prophets 
had one supreme and never-ending task — 
it was to hold this people to humility of 
spirit and to their religious ideals. The 
tendency was strong to become fanatically 
over-confident, nationally selfish, politi- 
cally arrogant, and religiously as intolerant 
as superficial. 

When the Hebrew nation was humil- 
iated before the nations and left crushed 
and bleeding in the dust, her great prophets 
saw in this the discipline of Jehovah. The 
ideals of the Hebrews should not perish. 
The nation should be purged and purified. 
A '* remnant'' should carry forward the 
divine purpose. The prophets had the 
12 



THE MASTER SECRET 

saving salt of ''idealism." They conceived 
the nation vividly as a person, as a ''suf- 
fering servant of Jehovah.'* 

There then arose before Israel's great 
prophet the sublimest ideal vision that ever 
filled the soul of a seer with divine afflatus. 
Out of the bruised nation there arises be- 
fore his vision One whose "face was so 
marred, more than the face of any man,*' 
that men were "astonied'' at Him. They 
"esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, 
and afflicted.'' And it seemed as though 
He should be "cut off" with none left to 
perpetuate Him or "to declare His gener- 
ation." Yet a more marvelous conception 
supersedes this, of One "despised and re- 
jected of men; a Man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief: and as One from 
whom men hide their faces." The piteous 
and repulsive and even hideous becomes 
glorious in beauty and power. 

A new truth is coming to view. This 
Silent Sufferer, who "as a sheep before his 
shearers is dumb," opening not His mouth, 
has saving power. It pleased the Lord to 
"bruise Him," to "put Him to grief." Out 
of this deep humiliation shall spring an 
immortal power that shall make the kings 
13 



THE MASTER SECRET 

of the earth *'shut their mouths'* before 
Him in awe. "He shall see of the travail 
of His soul and shall be satisfied/' "Surely 
He hath borne our griefs and carried our 
sorrows. . . . He was wounded for 
our transgressions. He was bruised for 
our iniquities; the chastisement of our 
peace was upon Him ; and with His stripes 
we are healed. All we, like sheep, have 
gone astray; we have turned every one 
to his own way; and the Lord hath laid 
on Him the iniquity of us all." This one 
shall indeed "divide" a "portion v/ith the 
great, and the spoil with the strong."* 

So the vision in the sixty-third of 
Isaiah is of one that cometh from Edom 
with dyed garments from Bozrah. Out 
from the South the prophet sees a Deliverer 
coming, not with an army, but alone. 
From the ruins of Jerusalem with desolated 
temple and cruel humiliation the seer be- 
holds a Redeemer approaching, swaying 
forward not as one who staggers in weak- 
ness, but as one who is invincible in power. 

And the One is heard to say, "I have 
trodden the wine press alone." 

There is here not alone the boast of 



* Isaiah 53. 

14 



THE MASTER SECRET 

single-handed victory, but the cry of a 
great and noble sorrow. This Man of the 
prophet's vision has entered the Great 
Solitude where the soul must meet Duty 
and Destiny and God alone. 

The noblest of the redmen used to send 
their youth singly and alone into the soli- 
tudes and the silences, there for days and 
nights to remain silent under the stars that 
they might become aware of the Great 
Spirit and of their own souls. 

It would be well if, far more than we 
do, we, too, could send our youth into the 
solitude and the silence. In the des^'re for 
seclusion, often interpreted as moodiness 
of young people as they come face to face 
with the great change from youth to 
maturity, in facing the mystery of life, 
there should be opportunity for self-knowl- 
edge, self-reverence, and self-mastery. 

The secret that lies deeply in the 
Method of the Master is the secret of rever- 
ence for one's own soul, and reverence for 
God. Out of these reverences springs the 
complementary reverence for other people's 
souls. All hopeful and sound social phi- 
losophy must take up this principle of 
reverence for the person. And it is in the 
15 



THE MASTER SECRET 

Sinaitic solitudes and silences that men 
grow reverent and independent and suf- 
ficient. Only as men become aware of 
God and of their own souls can they stand 
upon their own feet and hear intelligently 
the voice of the Lord. 

We hear much to-day about socializing 
industry, about the social state, and about 
the social significance of Christianity. 

As a recognition of the diffusion of the 
Spirit of Christianity and of the increasing 
complexity of the industrial, economic, and 
political relations of the age, this has 
significance. But there is the greater need 
of grasping the truth that life is essentially 
individual. 

All social relationships, however im- 
portant, are yet superficial compared witli 
the soul's own individuality. Individual- 
ism is the deepest philosophy of life. Indi- 
vidualists we must all be or become flotsam 
and jetsam. The social powers of men lie 
in the fact that as individuals they stand 
independent and above mere relationships 
and can both criticise and control them. 
Socialism, in the sense of an absolute 
principle, is self-destructive. Society can 
be Christian and enduring only as its 
16 



THE MASTER SECRET 

members become independent and intelli- 
gent enough to make society Christian, 
through the adoption of the spirit of social 
service; not by reversing the process and 
expecting to make men Christian by social- 
izing industry and by the aid of social 
institutions. However much value may 
be attached to wholesome environment, 
environment can not create anything — it 
can only offer favorable soil in which living 
seed may spring to fruitage. A spiritual 
desert will never produce the fruits of 
righteousness, however much it may be 
tilled and watered. 

We need to come back to the everlast- 
ing truth that the Soul and God alone 
stand sure. 

It would be well if we could restore the 
significance of individual conversion as the 
initiation of individual religious life. 

The outward accompaniments, visible 
phenomena, the tragic experiences are not 
essential. We could no more restore the 
camp-meeting of one hundred years ago, 
with its '* bodily exercises,*' which in them- 
selves profited little, than the rude social 
customs of the frontier. 

But when the deep seriousness of the 
2 17 



THE MASTER SECRET 

soul's personal approach to God was lost 
or dimmed, spiritual life began to lose its 
definite and distinctive character. A so- 
cialized Christianity tends to vagueness. 
The profound personal conviction of re- 
lationship with God is blurred. Religion 
becomes a mild altruism, good-natured, but 
lacking both in clearness of vision and 
strength of conviction. 

The mere seeking of the external as- 
pects of intense spiritual experiences may 
become in the highest degree artificial, a 
sort of pretense, a play. But the bleaching 
of religion out into commonplace morality 
and mere decency of living is to rob re- 
ligion of any deep significance or compell- 
ing power and to blur the eternal issues of 
life. As a matter of conventions merely, 
the tendency to sag is irresistible. 

Religion may of necessity find its ex- 
pression in social service, but yet social 
service is not religion. Religion is the 
soul's conscious response to the Spirit and 
the Will of God. The soul must stand 
solitary before God to become self-con- 
scious. 

After all has been said that may be said 
about the social significance of Christian- 
18 



THE MASTER SECRET 

ity, it still remains true that Jesus selected 
a few individual men and sent them forth 
with the leaven of the Kingdom in their 
souls. This was and is the Method of the 
Master. 

And God's method of forging great 
souls is the Master Secret of humanity. 

After the most diligent industry has 
dug up and sifted out all that may be found 
in the heredity and environment of a great 
man, the Master Secret still lies there in 
the solitude of his own soul. How he met 
the world and duty and God, and what 
became the master motive of his life, that 
is the master secret. 

The transcendent interest of the Gos- 
pels lies in this, that they contain a marvel- 
ous revelation of the soul of Christ. Biog- 
raphies in the ordinary sense the Gospels 
are not. In the deeper sense, as a revela- 
tion of the soul of their subject, the Gos- 
pels are unequaled. 

The Gospels afford a glimpse into the 
holy of holies of the Virgin's soul. It seems 
to me all discussion of the virgin birth, as 
though this question could be raised and 
considered in cold blood, as any piece of 
historical criticism, borders upon profanity 
19 



THE MASTER SECRET 

and misses something essential, as life 
itself in the research of the biologists. 
Into the holy mystery of the soul of Mary 
we are permitted to look. Reverence 
alone becomes us. 

Around the Bethlehem manger-cradle 
and in the temple are groups of devout 
souls that have vision for the glory of God. 
At the age of twelve Jesus in the temple 
utters a most significant word, *^Wist ye 
not that I must be about My Father's 
business?'' Nothing more until His public 
ministry. A mass of detail that would fill 
volumes might have been given to fill these 
blank intervening pages and have served 
only to confuse the signally significant 
thing, the deep-lying motive, the soul- 
secret, the true character of the indi- 
viduality of Jesus. 

Let us come near here, in deepest rev- 
erence, to the power of motherhood in 
forging the soul of the child. Mary's 
maternal prayer has been treasured. Out 
of the spiritual passion of her race she 
voices the Magnificat. The spirit of 
prophecy breathes through her. And in 
that atmosphere Jesus came. 

Again at the baptism, and in the temp- 
20 



THE MASTER SECRET 

tatlon, a soul-secret is revealed. The atti- 
tude of Jesus towards the Father's will, 
and His attitude towards the subtle temp- 
tations to world mastery by the methods 
of the world, make His inner life as an 
open book. 

So also the prayers of Jesus treasured 
for us as they were graven upon the minds 
of His disciples who heard Him as He 
prayed, or to whom He told the prayers 
that were forged in His soul in the storm 
and stress of His sorrow — the prayers of 
Jesus given in the m.ost generous and 
sacred and divine confidence — constitute a 
soul-revelation nowhere equaled. 

So, too, the words from the Cross are a 
revelation. 

And this is the method of God — the 
Master Secret of humanity that out of the 
disciple of solitude the soul shall come 
with the beauty and strength of God. 
For every soul must become like Christ. 
Every soul must become a savior. Merely 
to endure sorrow or temptation is not 
enough. The use we make of life is the 
main thing. We, too, must march breast- 
forward as Jesus did. We, too, must 
know His baptism. 

21 



THE MASTER SECRET 

Our personal sorrows are unbearable 
because we meet them pettily and selfishly. 
Out from every great sorrow, and our 
deepest experiences are inseparably linked 
with sorrow, we should come as Jesus did, 
with faces chastened but smitten with the 
light of eternal day. We have no right to 
pass through any deep experience and 
come forth less than when we entered 
upon it. Not to crush and bruise and 
weaken, but to strengthen and ennoble us, 
is the discipline of life given. *^The bruised 
reed He will not break and the smoking 
flax He will not quench.*' 

It is a sin to meet sorrow and not be 
made better by its touch. The strength 
of God is promised, not merely that we 
may somehow endure, but that we may be 
^^more than conquerors.'* We have the 
right to pray, *^Let the beauty of the Lord 
our God be upon us.'* But the prayer can 
not be answered unless our faces are lifted 
to the skies. **A11 chastening seemeth for 
the present to be not joyous but grievous; 
yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit 
unto them that are exercised thereby.'* 

And this is the method of God, the 
master secret of humanity. 
22 



THE MASTER SECRET 

" Then welcome each rebuff 
That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids not sit nor stand, but go; 
Be our joys three parts pain; 
Strive, and hold cheap the strain; 
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge 
the throe." 

The inner secret of a great life is always 
of fascinating interest. It will never cease 
to be of profound interest to seek an 
answer to the question, ''How did Lincoln 
come to be?** 

Here, too, we are given a glimpse into 
soul secrets. He lost his mother when he 
was but nine years old, but her influence 
was ineffaceable. She seems to have been 
much above the average of her associates 
in intelligence and native refinement. But 
the hardships of a pioneer life crushed out 
her life. This early bereavement left its 
mark upon Lincoln. In his early man- 
hood he loved with all the chivalrous de- 
votion of his nature Ann Rutledge, who 
sickened and died under circumstances 
most pathetic. Lincoln spent with her 
the last hour of her consciousness. She 
then relapsed in her brain fever into coma, 
and Lincoln went out into the midnight of 

23 



THE MASTER SECRET 

a great grief that for months threatened 
to unsettle his reason. Biographers have 
in general made but slight reference to the 
deeply personal experiences of Lincoln. 
Yet these great sorrows, followed by a life 
of continuous disappointments, culmina- 
ting in the taking into his own soul a 
nation's woe, produced the Lincoln whom 
we know. Out of deep sorrow the Man 
came. His character was forged in the 
storm and stress of the elemental forces 
that have made great souls in all ages. 
He, too, could say, '*I have trodden the 
wine press alone." 

We do not know how diamonds are 
made. Nature guards her secret well. 
We know that diamonds do not rot. As 
you hold the precious stone in your hand, 
''hither and thither turning it to see the 
rich light play in its mysterious depths," 
you marvel as to the Master Secret by 
which carbon is turned into splendor of 
light. 

And so we marvel at the transfiguration 
of personality into divine beauty and 
power. But here the secret is not so jeal- 
ously guarded. God gives us glimpses 
into the souls of men as He has into the 
24 



THE MASTER SECRET 

soul of His Son. It is not in maydays of 
transient delight that greatness of soul is 
achieved, but in the storm and stress — in 
the solitudes — in the awful silence. No 
life is strong that merely flits in the sun- 
beams of summer days. Often God will 
not let us be so silly and trifling and super- 
ficial as we wish. The waters come in 
upon our souls. Out of the deeps we cry 
to God. And He hears our cry, not merely 
to lift us out of the waters into which we 
are sinking through unbelief, but to make 
us forever nobler and mightier for that 
lift of the Divine Hand. 

"There are (those) who hold life like a precious 
stone, 
Hither and thither turning it to see 
The rich Hght play in its mysterious depths; 
And other men to whom life seems a bridge 
By which they pass to things which lie beyond; 
And others, still, who count life but as wine, 
In which they drink their pledges to their friends. 
But then there are to whom life's dearness lies 
In that it is the pressure of God's hand, 
With which He holds our feeble hand in love, 
And makes us know ourselves in knowing Him."* 



* Extract from note-book of Phillips Brooks. — Life of 
Brooks, Allen. Vol. II, p. 366. 



25 



The Master Motive 

"Then said I, Lo, I am come; 
In the roll of the book it is written of me: 
I delight to do Thy will, O my God; 
Yea, Thy law is within my heart." 

—Psalms 40: 7-8* 

Jesus was a revolutionist. He came to 
establish a new order. He was a con- 
structive revolutionist, and a constructive 
revolutionist is a true evolutionist. In evo- 
lution the husks are thrown off. The vi- 
tality of the seed is conserved, not de- 
stroyed. The expansion of a vital principle 
creates the superficial impression of ruin; 
but it is destruction that there may be 
construction; it is death that there may 
be life; it is the birth pain of joy. 

The Old Testament and the old dis- 
pensation contained seed. These men of 
vision saw fundamental issues and grasped 
principles. 

The conception that lies back of this 
fortieth psalm is noble. Here is a per- 

* Also Hebrews 10 

26 



THE MASTER MOTIVE 

sonality with penetrating vision who sees 
the profound purpose of God in the re- 
ligious sacrifices which He has ordained, 
but who also sees that God's purpose can 
not be fulfilled by mere sacrifices. As a 
servant of God, this man finds his noble 
destiny to be the bringing of his own life 
up to the living service of God. 

*'Many, O Lord my God, are the wonderful works 
which Thou hast done, 
And Thy thoughts which are to us- ward; 
They can not be set in order unto Thee; 
If I would declare and speak of them, 
They are more than can be numbered. 
Sacrifice and offering Thou hast no delight in; 
Mine eyes hast Thou opened; 
Burnt offering and sin offering hast Thou not re- 
quired. 
Then said I, Lo, I am come; 
In the roll of the book it is written of me: 
I delight to do Thy will, O my God ; 
Yea, Thy law is within my heart." 

—Psalms 40: 5-8, 

And this firm grasp of divine purpose is 
carried forward in the New Testament and 
applied to the Savior. He is represented 
as taking up this great prayer and pre- 
senting His own life with all its depths of 
purpose as a sacrifice to God. 
27 



THE MASTER SECRET 

Jesus came to lift into power the new 
law. The principle of His life was not 
justice, but love. He did not come to 
teach men to stand stoutly for their rights 
and for the '* square deal." He taught and 
illustrated a sort of noble contempt for 
mere petty personal rights and preroga- 
tives. 

'*Ye have heard that it was said, An 
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth: 
but I say unto you. Resist not him that is 
evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on thy 
right cheek, turn to him the other also. 
And whosoever shall compel thee to go one 
mile, go with him twain. Give to him 
that asketh thee, and from him that would 
borrow of thee, turn not thou away." 

What of it. He seems to say, and the 
message gains compelling significance in 
the light of His own life — what of it, if men 
do impose upon you in the things of petty 
ambition. Be nobly improvident here. 
You have infinitely nobler business than 
to be greatly concerned about your coat 
or cloak. The Master Motive lies deeper. 
Neither can you afford to suffer loss of 
energy and influence and to become be- 
28 



THE MASTER MOTIVE 

meaned by squabbling v/ith rude imperti- 
nence. If one strike thee on the right 
cheek, turn to him the other also. 

Soldiers engaged in an urgent cam- 
paign, explorers seeking the pole, hunters 
on the chase; nay, better still, statesmen 
who have grasped commanding ideals, 
apostles with a burning message, souls 
with a destiny to fulfill, can afford to dis- 
card impedimenta. 

A great purpose, a mighty motive makes 
men apparently reckless of lesser things. 
They ''press towards the prize of a high 
calling.'* 

Thus the Master Secret of Jesus be- 
comes His Master Motive. Here as else- 
where the centrally great in principle be- 
comes the duty of men. The humblest 
become possessors of the greatest. Life's 
eternal values are not reserved for the 
great of this world. God has revealed 
them unto babes. The Master Motive is 
his who loves. God prizes the simple, sin- 
cere life that is willing to accept the great 
law. Jesus was not a cynical Diogenes 
carrying a lantern by daylight looking for 
''a man.'* Jesus searched the souls of men 
29 



THE MASTER SECRET 

for capacity of sympathy with the master 
passion of His own life, and found such 
capacity. 

Into this great and Master Motive He 
inducted men who were wilHng. And He 
has forever been doing so. The company 
of souls thus linked to Him through the 
brief centuries is indeed a ''noble com- 
pany. ' * The power of the Master Motive 
grows. 

But let us see the nature of this Master 
Motive. 

Jesus, as has been said, was a con- 
structive revolutionist, a true evolutionist. 
He treated the ''law'* with profound 
respect. He evaluated the past and the 
treasures of tradition infinitely better than 
the official custodians of law and religion. 
He grasped the principles that lay im- 
bedded in law and tradition and set these 
principles free. 

Now, in the treatment of the Hebrew 
laws by Jesus there is an attitude that 
should greatly interest us in this age of 
science when the spirit and the method of 
science impel us to look into the nature of 
things for their inherent law or principle. 

Jesus saw the ultimate significance of 
30 



THE MASTER MOTIVE 

God's unwritten law as treasured by the 
Hebrew faith. That law reached back to 
and served as an educational discipline for 
the elemental forces that inhere in human 
nature. 

Take, for example, His treatment of 
marriage. Here is an elemental instinct. 
Man shares it with the animals. Jesus 
recognizes and respects this mating in- 
stinct. He said, ^'He which made them 
from the beginning made them male and 
female.'* God the Creator and Father is 
recognized in the natural law. Comple- 
mentary to this natural law is the religious 
law of marriage which makes this rela- 
tionship the holiest and most binding of 
social bonds. 

The Hebrews gave women a social and 
legal status in advance of the customs of 
their age. Wives could not be ''put away'' 
without legal procedure and bills of di- 
vorcement. But, even so, Jesus declared 
that such ''putting away" was a failure 
of the social purpose in God's law. He 
holds up to men the ideal of marriage that 
is forever perfect, because it grasps the 
ultimate spirit and purpose of God in the 
natural and religious institution of mar- 
31 



THE MASTER SECRET 

riage. Always and ever as man and 
woman under Christian auspices stand at 
the marriage altar, the relationship es- 
tablished is hallowed by the authoritative 
ideals of Jesus. His is the ultimate truth 
about this as about every other funda- 
mental fact and relation. 

So also is His treatment of prayer and 
of almsgiving and of Sabbath observance. 
He grasped principles. His words were 
spirit and life. His was the work of a 
constructive revolutionist. 

And now, in regard to the most funda- 
mental of all principles, the Master Motive 
of life, He speaks with ultimate authority. 

The disciples, in their personal jeal- 
ousies and ambitions, furnish the occasion 
for His teaching. 

The desire for mastery is an elemental 
passion. It has its use like every other 
instinct. In the brute it will be very 
''brutal." In brutal men it will be worse 
than brutal. No brute can be so brutal 
as a brutal man. The brute lacks the 
faculties and powers of a fallen angel that 
may be perverted to ingenious malevolence. 

The struggle for mastery is in the 
blood. This elemental passion needs edu- 
32 



THE MASTER MOTIVE 

cation and direction. In its more elemental 
forms it may become the Master Motive 
in the savage strife for chieftainship. 
The terrific battle for the leadership of 
the wild herd of beasts is almost more 
noble than the struggles for mastery 
among men, when this struggle is undis- 
ciplined by worthy motives and ideals. 
Business competition may be as merciless 
as the brute struggle for mastery. 

One stage of advance is gained when 
co-operation supplants competition. Even 
the " trusts/' with all their actual and pos- 
sible evils, are essentially an advance be- 
yond selfish and narrow competition. A 
step farther needs to be taken in trust 
organization and effect — the taking into 
account the silent partners, the public, the 
families of working men, society. 

And in the control of industry and of 
industrial organization, the function of 
government is largely that of umpire or 
referee to see that the improved rules of 
the game are observed by all. 

Now this is well. But again, let it be 
said that Jesus and the Christianity of 
Jesus do not find the goal of purpose here 
in the ''square deal." 
3 33 



THE MASTER SECRET 

The principle the Savior came to teach 
and to give first place as the Master Motive 
of men was not to secure merely the 
** square deal/' but to implant in men a 
noble and generous purpose to serve 
others, to minister in the highest interests 
of life. 

This is the Motive which He sets be- 
fore men as the goal of ambition. This 
primal instinct to gain supremacy is to be 
disciplined by love until the consuming 
passion of life shall be not to gain but to 
give. Of such it may be said: 

"Love took up the harp of life, and struck on all 
the chords with might; 
Struck the chord of self, which, trembling, passed 
in music out of sight." 

Jesus has come to implant this motive 
and to make it supreme. Under the 
'* tyranny of the instant'' even exponents 
of the gospel often miss the mark. In a 
recent sermon which was so much ap- 
preciated as to be requested for publica- 
tion and used in extensive circulation, 
occurs this sentiment: 

34 



THE MASTER MOTIVE 

'* If you are a vertebrate, 

Walk straight, 

Talk straight, 

Write straight. 

And fight straight! 
Never whine about your fate, 
Anywhere and everywhere 
Just be on the square; 
Help him on while you advance. 
Give the other man a chance; 
If you are a vertebrate, 

Just live straight." 

There is a popular appeal in this concep- 
tion. It lies level to the average compre- 
hension. But if Jesus Christ had come to 
make that appeal only, we should write 
Him down with the moralists of the ages. 
He came with another and diviner appeal. 
The Master Motive of His own life should 
become the master motive of men. To 
Nicodemus in the night interview He said, 
"For God so loved the world that He gave 
His only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth on Him should not perish, but 
have eternal life.'' 

It was to make this motive force ef- 
fective within humanity that Jesus came. 
To make that motive force effective is the 
mission and task of discipleship. The 
35 



THE MASTER SECRET 

word '* Christian*' stands centrally for just 
this, loyalty in spirit and conduct to the 
Master Motive. 

Here is the true philosophy of life. 
Here lies the true definition of destiny. 
Destiny is not blind fate, but the open 
door of opportunity which one must enter 
or never know the secret of God. Destiny, 
in the Christian conception, is not blind 
fate, but a possibility that must be realized 
in definite consecration and achievement. 

'*True life is an heroic achievement/' 
Fate never does anything good or ill for 
anybody. There is no moral destiny save 
that which is achieved either for good or 
evil by the response which one makes to 
the environment about him and the use he 
makes of the tendencies and aptitudes 
within him. 

So it often happens that a white lily 
rises somewhere out of the social mire and 
looks into God's face with the purity of 
heaven. The secret of character is here: 
the response of life to the will of God. 

Fate apparently decreed that a forlorn 

lad born in Kentucky in 1809, robbed of 

his '* angel mother" at nine, with a settled 

melancholy in his very soul that gave 

36 



THE MASTER MOTIVE 

pathos to his rich humor, disappointed for 
fifty years in almost every cherished am- 
bition, should be a Western frontiersman, 
ignorant and coarse, limited as were his 
associates — at best a rough Western law- 
yer. But destiny decreed otherwise. And 
in all reverence we must say that '* Honest 
Abe*' and Divine Providence worked to- 
gether to produce our country's savior. 

Such destiny may be lost as certainly 
as it may be won. It is the tragedy of 
humanity that many doubtless go vision- 
less and unblest through life who might 
have seen the glory of God and might have 
wrought at a task that would make angels 
envious. 

A letter from a friend elevated to a 
high office bore this petition, ''Pray that 
I may not only fill an office, but do a 
work." And the 'Svork" par excellence of 
men of Christian faith is to make supreme 
the Master Motive of Jesus, ''I am in the 
midst of you as he that serveth.*' 

Destiny is thus to be achieved. ''We 
have but to issue commands,'' says Maeter- 
linck, "and fate will obey. There is noth- 
ing in the world that will offer such long 
and patient submission." 
37 



The Master Word 

"But Thee, but Thee, O Sovereign Seer of time, 
But Thee, O poets' Poet, wisdom's Tongue, 
But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, 
O perfect life in perfect labor writ, 
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest — 
What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, 
What least defect or shadow of defect, 
What rumor tattled by an enemy, 
Of inference loose, what lack of grace 
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's or death's — 
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, 
Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?" 

— Lanier. 

**Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
Godr— Matt, 16: 16, 

** Every great man imposes upon the world 
the task of understanding him/* Thus 
philosophy is still and destined always to 
be largely an interpretation of Socrates 
and Plato, of Descartes and Kant and 
Hegel. From these mountains that hold 
the snows of summer upon their bosoms 
the valleys are nourished. All literature 
of power carries within itself the spiritual 
gulf streams that spring from the master 
souls who have lived in the great past. 
38 



THE MASTER WORD 

It is therefore in harmony with a 
fundamental law that Christianity should 
consist chiefly in an interpretation of 
Christ. And when Jesus turned to His 
disciples with the question, *'Who do men 
say that I, the Son of man, am?" and the 
farther and more direct question, ^^ Who say 
ye that I am?'* he asked the most search- 
ing and significant question of the ages. 

The designation of Himself as the 
*'Son of man" is interesting. This was a 
term of reproach applied to Him by His 
enemies. They had said contemptuously, 
this Jesus is just one of the common 
people, a "son of man." The disciples 
never use the expression when addressing 
Jesus or speaking of Him. But Jesus 
picked up this term of reproach, a bitter 
epithet, and wore it. The mud thrown at 
Jesus by malignant hands was transfigured 
into a jewel upon His breast. So He 
lifted the cross and was lifted upon it 
from ignomy to glory. 

Jesus accepted the designation. He 
identified Himself with the common people. 
Jesus was the world's great democrat. 

And yet He invites such confession 
concerning Himself as lifts Him into 
39 



THE MASTER SECRET 

divine pre-eminence. When Peter said, 
''Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
Hving God," Jesus was profoundly moved, 
and placed upon this confession the deep- 
est significance. ''Blessed art thou, Simon 
Barjona; for flesh and blood hath not re- 
vealed it unto thee, but My Father which 
is in Heaven. And I say unto thee, that 
thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will 
build My Church; and the gates of hell 
shall not prevail against it." 

Some centuries have passed since Jesus 
thus stood with His disciples at the head- 
waters of the beautiful sea. There by the 
shore, where the waves caressed the sands 
like a lover's kiss, or hurled their ponderous 
weight upon the rocks and cliffs, breaking 
with the laughter of Titans, Jesus asked 
the Great Question, '* Who do men say that 
I, the Son of man, am?" *'Who do ye 
say that I am?" 

Jesus, with His disciples, had ''re- 
treated" into the coasts of Caesarea Phil- 
ippi. It is said that in this region are the 
two springs, "Jor" and "Dan," whose 
combined waters are the source of the 
river that bears their combined names, 
the "Jordan." 

40 



THE MASTER WORD 

Jesus loved the solitude, the open sky, 
the mountain sides, the trees, and the 
water. He loved ''folks,'' too; but He 
got away from the crowd at times to be 
alone with God and with His disciples. 
There is perfect wholesomeness and poise 
in the Master's soul. 

" Into the woods my Master went, 
Clean forspent, forspent. 

Into the woods my Master came, 
Forspent with love and shame. 
But the olives they were not blind to Him, 
The little gray leaves were kind to Him: 
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him 
When into the woods He came. 

"Out of the woods my Master went, 
And He was well content. 

Out of the woods my Master came, 
Content with death and shame. 
When Death and Shame would woo Him last. 
From under the trees they drew Him last: 
T was on a tree they slew Him — last 
When out of the woods He came."* 

It was here in the retreat by the head- 
waters of the Jordan '*when Jesus came 
into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi" that 
Jesus elicited the Great Confession. He 

* A Ballad of Trees and the Master. Lanier. 

41 



THE MASTER SECRET 

asked a leading question: he drew Peter 
out. The time had come for the disciples 
to know the sweep and power, the majesty 
of their Lord's personality. He was no 
mere rabbi after the order of the teachers 
of Israel. 

In answer to His question, "Who do 
men say that I, the Son of man, am?'* 
the disciples repeated what men were say- 
ing in their attempts to understand Jesus. 
**Some say John the Baptist; some Elias; 
and others Jeremias or one of the proph- 
ets." 

All these were appreciative estimates. 
This was the best men knew. They could 
give Jesus no higher honor. 

But Jesus elicited and welcomed an 
entirely different estimate of Himself. 
Though He called Himself the **Son of 
man," when Peter said, '*Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God," Jesus 
replied, ** Flesh and blood hath not re- 
vealed it unto thee, but My Father which 
art in Heaven." 

If Jesus ever stated the central and 

vital principle of religion. It Is here. This 

answer In the Great Confession Is the 

climax, the consummation of revelation. 

42 



THE MASTER WORD 

At the "baptism" the heavens were 
opened and a voice from above said, "This 
is My beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased." Few, very few, indeed, are the 
authentic instances in which God has thus 
spoken from the open heavens. The 
occasion is extraordinary, the endorse- 
ment and authentication of Christ com- 
plete. Yet this was not the climax or 
consummation of . God's revelation in 
Christ. :-. 

In the temptation Jesus met in type 
and principle every temptation to which 
humanity is subject. The appeal of the 
flesh, that stones be turned to bread, that 
spiritual powers be used for physical ends; 
the appeal to the lust of power, the con- 
quest of the world by the world's methods; 
the appeal to superficial and fictitious 
spiritual ascendency by mere marvels, such 
as casting Himself down from the temple 
with the expectation that He should be 
upborn by unseen angels' hands. It was 
a great hour for humanity when Jesus 
Christ, discerning the very nature of evil, 
said, "Get thee behind Me, Satan." 

At a later day Jesus entered into Jeru- 
salem as a King. The people strewed the 
43 



THE MASTER SECRET 

road with their garments and with the 
branches of trees, and there came from the 
multitudes a spontaneous '^Hosanna in 
the highest'^ — that anthem from a people's 
heart has never ceased to echo round the 
world — that, too, was a great day for 
humanity. 

But the climax and the consummation 
of God's revelation in Jesus Christ was 
not at the temptation and the mastery of 
evil, nor in the spontaneous acclaim of the 
multitude, but in the moment of illumina- 
tion when there sprang from the soul of 
man the Great Confession, ^^Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God." 

And as Jesus put Himself to the test 
there in Palestine, so He does in the wider 
field of human history. Jesus was no 
provincial; He spoke in world terms, He 
dealt with humanity, and His program 
comprises the ages. 

And He stands before us to-day with 
the same question, **Who do men say 
that I, the Son of man, am?" '*Who do 
ye say that I am?" 

Jesus Christ can not be ignored. He 
has so wrought Himself into humanity's 
best life that to ignore Him is insane. 
44 



THE MASTER WORD 

There are various schools of medicine, but 
underneath all medical science are the 
forces of nature that heal. There are many 
kinds of architecture, but none can ignore 
the power we call gravitation. Jesus 
stands central in the spiritual life of the 
world. Sects may differ and even war 
among themselves, but none can do with- 
out Christ. Severed from Him, ethics 
and religion both are withered branches, 
and fruitless. The stamp of His authority 
is upon the very principles which men 
must use in making moral judgments, and 
religious faith finds its definition in Him. 
Love as a motive force in the world springs 
from this life which John declares was and 
is '^the Light of the world.^' 

Then as now there are various answers 
to the Great Question. But none now 
speak ill of Him. He has silenced all cavil 
and shamed all contempt. Many lips 
still speak His name in coarse and brutal 
blasphemy, but even such do not know 
what they say or do not mean what they 
say. Taken seriously and sincerely, men 
reverence Christ. Like the coarse blus- 
terer who was subdued before a great 
painting of the Christ and unconsciously 
45 



THE MASTER SECRET 

removed his hat and spoke softly, so all 
men do Him reverence. 

Yet this kind of respect is not sufficient. 
To place Him with the great and good, 
and to call Him one of the prophets, does 
not suffice. The '*Rock*' alone sufficient 
to support the ''Church'' is the recognition 
of Jesus as ''the Christ, the Son of the 
living God." 

And this recognition is born within 
men by the light of the Eternal. Flesh 
and blood does not reveal it. This inward 
conviction of the Deity of Jesus is inspired 
by God Himself within the souls of men. 

At first glance it seems an astonishing 
thing that Peter, of all men, should be the 
one from whom Jesus should elicit this 
confession, and that to him, of all men, 
should be given the designation, "Rock.*' 

But Peter was capable of utter sin- 
cerity and of clear conviction, courage to 
step out into new light, capacity for truth. 
This impulsive and fluctuating man could 
become as stable as granite. Often we 
have heard Peter discussed as a "weak'* 
man. This is not a true estimate. A 
mere weakling is incapable of truth. 
Jesus selected His man. Peter was capa- 
46 



THE MASTER WORD 

ble later of the broader interpretation of 
the gospel, and ''broke down the middle 
wall of partition" between the Jews and 
the Gentiles. He voiced the world-message 
of salvation. 

And strong men and women, capable 
of conviction and capable of truth, capable 
of power; men and women, resourceful 
and of warm sympathies, and capable of 
splendid devotion, are needed now. The 
progress of the Kingdom of Christ rests 
upon men and women who can do things. 

But the absolute importance of that 
initial conviction within the soul — born of 
God — can not be overlooked. Nothing 
less than this evidence that God the Father 
had by His Spirit wrought conviction and 
given vision to the soul satisfied the 
Master. He was not looking for mere 
personal regard from men. They might 
have exhausted language to speak words 
of mere eulogy, but that would not have 
satisfied the eager inquiry of Jesus. All 
through the ages there have been such 
words spoken of Jesus as no other has 
ever elicited. 

Jean Paul Richter cried out in ecstasy 
of Jesus, "The mightiest among the pure 
47 



THE MASTER SECRET 

and the purest among the mighty, whose 
pierced hands have Hfted empires off their 
hinges, turned the stream of the centuries 
out of its channel, and still rules the ages." 
Such intellects as Carlyle and Browning 
have given their unstinted eulogy to this 
"Crystal Christ." 

Yet such testimony alone is not suf- 
ficient — there is a sense of incompleteness 
and insufficiency about it all. We load 
our shelves with the literature of Christ- 
ology, and it is the most wonderful liter- 
ature of the ages; but the ultimate revela- 
tion of His divinity is not there — it is 
within the soul of the humble believer. 
*' Behold," said Jesus, to ordinary men 
like ourselves, ''Behold, the Kingdom of 
Heaven is within you." The Great Con- 
fession, born in the soul by the Spirit of 
God, that Jesus is the Christ, is alone 
sufficient. 

It is not unusual to try and interpret 
Christ and Christianity solely in terms of 
charity. It is easy to remember the 
emphasis Jesus Himself placed upon doing 
good and to forget this central emphasis 
which He placed upon the Great Con- 
fession. 

48 



THE MASTER WORD 

Paul seized upon the vital principle of 
Christian religion when he said, ''Though 
I give my body to be burned and all my 
goods to feed the poor, and have not 
charity. It profiteth me nothing.'* The 
spirit of love of which Paul speaks is to 
be indentified with the Great Confession 
of his own Deity, of which Christ Himself 
speaks. 

Not merely to do good, important as 
doing good may seem, but the summons to 
a Christian life Is a summons to the Great 
Confession. This faith In the Son of man 
as the Christ Is the fruitful faith of all the 
ages. 

It is this faith for which men are willing 
to die, as Chinese Christians showed them- 
selves willing to do In this modern age of 
martyrs. Not for a dogma, or a system 
of moral teaching and good works, but for 
Him who died for them, men and tender 
women, and even children, are willing to 
die. This faith has Inspired in men 
supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ. 

In the Great Confession lies the dy- 
namics of faith. The Church Jesus 
founded is not an ethical culture club nor 

a charity organization, but a body of 
4 49 



THE MASTER SECRET 

disciples who share a common faith. The 
Great Confession is the master word of 
union. BeHeving men may have the wid- 
est difference upon other questions, but 
in answer to the Supreme Question they 
give one answer, '^Thou art the Christ, 
the Son of the living God.** 

There are two symbolic narratives in 
the Bible that have complementary sig- 
nification. At the Tower of Babel there 
was confusion of tongues. Here was the 
symbol of ambition and selfishness and 
materialism and the confusion, the spir- 
itual confusion, that results. On the day 
of Pentecost, on the contrary, men heard 
each in his own tongue the marvelous 
message of the gospel and there was unity. 
Ultimately all disunion and discord will be 
harmonized in the Great Confession. 



50 



Vision and Task 

"But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will 
that can, 
Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, 
they are! 
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed 
to man, 
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth 
sound, but a star. 
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is 
nought ; 
It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, and all 
is said: 
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my 
thought, 
And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider 
and bow the head! 

''Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared; 
Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that 
come too slow. 
For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that 
he feared. 
That he even gave it a thought, the one thing 
was to go. 

51 



THE MASTER SECRET 

Never to be again! But many more of the kind 
As good, nay, better perchance: is this your com- 
fort to me? 
To me, who must be saved because I cling with my 
mind 
To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, 
what was, shall be." — Browning. 

*' There comes a moment in life when moral 
beauty seems more urgent, more penetrating than 
intellectual beauty; when all the mind has treas- 
ured must be bathed in the greatness of soul, lest it 
perish in the sandy desert, forlorn as the river that 
seeks in vain for the sea." 

"Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon 
us,''— Psalms 90: 17. 

*'I was not disobedient unto the Heavenly 
vision." — Paul. 

''And He (Jesus) turned Him unto His dis- 
ciples and said privately. Blessed are the eyes 
which see the things that ye see." — Luke 10: 23. 

"And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith 

God, 
I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh: 
And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 
And your young men shall see visions, 
And your old men shall dream dreams: 
Yea, and on my servants and on my handmaidens 

in those days 
Will I pour forth of My Spirit; and they shall 

prophesy." — Acts 2. 
52 



VISION AND TASK 

Seafarers take their bearings from the 
stars. At stated intervals, though upon 
famihar waters, they determine their own 
latitude and longitude by fresh observa- 
tions of the heavenly bodies. The con- 
servation of life's great reverences, the 
preservation of faith in their own spiritual 
capacity, the gift of vision, the worth of 
personality, the fact of God — these are 
the fixed stars by which men must get 
their reckonings. 

Two things are to be noted concerning 
the man of vision. First, he has the right 
of way. To him other men must listen. 
He has the significant word. And second, 
the intimate and vital relationship between 
vision and task. Vision and task go to- 
gether. Without vision there can be no 
purposeful task. And without definite task 
the power of vision is lost. Mr. Cham- 
berlain, in a remarkable discussion of the 
relationship between poetry and music* 
shows that music, except as wedded to 
poetry, loses definite significance, and that 
poetry finds its completest and highest 
expression in musical form. Thus, too, 



* Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, Chamberlain, 
vol. II, p. 506. 

S3 



THE MASTER SECRET 

vision and task stand in mutual and inter- 
dependent relation. 

But vision must have validity. The 
more thoroughly penetrating and search- 
ing in its test of realities the power of vision 
becomes, the greater the range and sweep 
and constructive use of this power. Angelo 
greatly increased the possibilities of art 
by his thoroughly original and faithful 
study of human anatomy. His figures de- 
parted absolutely from the conventional 
style of treatment that had prevailed. 
His men had skeletons and muscles and 
nerves — all as faithfully underlying the 
superficial painting or sculpture as though 
he had been a teacher of anatomy. Nature 
is infinitely richer than unintelligent fancy. 
Task and vision here in the master of art 
in its noblest forms were most intimately 
wedded. 

There is a tradition cherished that 
Hiram Abi (or Hiram the master), who 
had charge of the building of Solomon's 
Temple, was slain. The man of vision 
having been removed, confusion resulted. 
There could be no progress without defi- 
nite plans from the man of vision. Like a 
swarm of bees whose queen had been 
54 



VISION AND TASK 

killed, there was chaos. Sacred tradition 
also tells us of an ancient '* skyscraper/' 
the '* Tower of Babel," work upon v/hich 
fell into chaotic disorder by reason of a 
''confusion of tongues/' Here, too, is 
suggested the loss of vision. Before 
Michael Angelo was commissioned to plan 
St. Peter's, there had been many designs 
submitted — fussy, elaborate and ambi- 
tious, confused and lacking in both dignity 
and unity of conception. At last the 
master had a vision of the great dome 
swung between heaven and earth that it 
was the task of the age to realize in marble 
and gold. 

So into the petty politics and policies, 
the selfish ambition of rulers and States, 
God thrusts forward now and again a 
statesman, the man of vision, and out of 
confusion and chaos governments spring 
that embody new and grander ideas of 
national power and purpose. 

Sometimes the doer and the seer are 
not the same, but different men who work 
together. Hegel, at the siege of Jena, 
working away at his window on the con- 
cluding chapters of his ''Phenomenology 
of Spirit," while Napoleon, with an army 
55 



THE MASTER SECRET 

of a hundred thousand men, was pounding 
the city's defenses to pieces, was laying 
down in definiteness of conception the 
ideal of national solidarity that afterwards 
Bismarck for Germany and Lincoln for 
America made so effective in the most 
notable political achievements of the age. 
So Mazzini and Garibaldi, Cavour and 
the Immanuels have conspired together — 
wrought together — for the new Italy. 
Without the men of vision the restless 
energies of men would perhaps mark time 
on battlefields and in halls of legislation; 
but there could be no progress. 

The Bible method culminates its record 
of vision and the power of vision in the 
most marvelous of all visions — the vision 
and the power of vision in the mind of 
the Master. Jesus was the greatest of all 
the prophets, of a remarkable lineage of 
men of vision. Jesus cherished the power 
of vision as the highest power that even 
He possessed. 

On the Mount of Transfiguration there 
was converse about the future. Here the 
spiritual statesmanship of the centuries 
mapped out the program of the ages to 
come. Jesus cherished the power of 
56 



VISION AND TASK 

vision in His disciples. He did not at- 
tempt to shield them from the storm and 
stress of world conflict. He '*sent them 
forth" to breast the world. As a sufficient 
safeguard, He promised them spiritual 
baptism. And when the promise found 
distinctive fulfillment on the **Day of 
Pentecost/' a man of vision stood up to 
say, ''This is that which hath been spoken.'' 

"And it shall be in the last days, saith God, 
I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh: 
And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 
And your young men shall see visions. 
And your old men shall dream dreams: 
Yea, and on My servants and on My hand- 
maidens in those days 
Will I pour forth of My Spirit, and they shall 
prophesy." 

The method of Jesus is thus in pro- 
found harmony with the method of prog- 
ress elsewhere. It would be strange if in 
the supreme matters of the Spirit, and in 
the execution of a world program, Jesus 
Christ should not illustrate the very 
highest use of the power of vision. He 
gave His disciples little of ritual and noth- 
ing of organization. Baptism and a Prayer 
and a Supper of Spiritual Fellowship. 
57 



THE MASTER SECRET 

These seem a meager program for world 
organization. But in the hearts of the 
men He sent forth lay the Master Secret 
and the Master Motive. And the source 
of inspiration was open to them in the 
presence of the Comforter. With such 
equipment men become invincible. They 
and their vision belong to the ages, and 
their task is humanity's task. 

**Your young men shall see visions." 
Youth is the time of vision. The world 
progresses no farther in any generation 
than its young men can see in its begin- 
ning. The achievement of an age will not 
go an inch beyond the dreams of its spir- 
itual architects. The chisels of the work- 
men will never cut out from marble or 
granite any nobler statues than those that 
live in the imagination of the artist who 
conceives and directs their labors. If we 
would measure men, we must know the 
size of their convictions, the moral girth 
of their ideas. Ultimately, the measure of 
man must be the radius of his vision, the 
sweep of his horizon, the outlook from the 
towers of his soul. The opportune time for 
mastering life's spiritual geometry is in 
the dewy morning, when the birds are 
58 



VISION AND TASK 

a-song in the trees, and the sunlight of the 
new day is unclouded, and there is bound- 
ing energy in the unstiffened joints. There 
is a philosophy in the regulation that an 
amateur athlete shall compete but a cer- 
tain length of time. Soon his day is past. 
His opportunities are few. He may come 
to the climax of power but once. He 
makes his record and must be estimated 
by that standard ever after. You may 
try once for the far vision. You may 
ascend once into the mountain and try to 
read God's thoughts after Him. The 
tabernacle of your life will be built after 
that vision. You will have no other. If 
you have caught no vision, if no great 
enthusiasm seizes you then, you are no 
prophet. You may do good work in the 
world, but it must be henceforth as a 
labor for another. You are not capable 
of spiritual initiation, you have no clear 
vision of a tabernacle which you are to 
build, you may only help to build other's. 

Valid vision discriminates values. 

It has often been noted that the 

Apostle Paul had profound influence in 

shaping the Christian conceptions of the 

early centuries, and so of all Christian 

59 



THE MASTER SECRET 

theology. Sometimes this is noted as 
though Paul had so modified the original 
teaching of Jesus and the belief of the dis- 
ciples as to vitiate the purity of the 
original teaching. On the contrary, it was 
this man of vision who saw the significance 
of the Cross and lifted in into place and 
power forever as the central symbol of 
faith. Here was the man of discrimination 
whose call to apostleship was so important 
and significant that we have the record of 
the remarkable experience. To this one 
man, as though thus to set out the supreme 
import of his future task, Jesus appeared 
and upon him laid the Master task of the 
ages. He was the seer whose vision should 
culminate the prophetic foreshadowings of 
many centuries and form the basis of the 
program of future ages. When Jesus left 
to His discipleship the great commission 
to go into all the world preaching the 
gospel. He gave . to this man of vision, 
''born out of due time," the task of defin- 
ing the commission. 

The culmination of the divine purposes 
is to be found in the realm of human per- 
sonalities and human achievement. Here, 
if anywhere, the function of vision will find 
60 



VISION AND TASK 

perpetual place. Is any Utopia of eco- 
nomic justice to be realized in this world 
of selfish struggle? It will be when, and 
only when, men of vision share increasingly 
the vision of Jesus and the compassion of 
Jesus, and make both the vision and the 
passion compelling upon society. Will the 
dream of democratic equality ever be more 
than a ^* dream?" It w^ill when men of 
commanding leadership are possessed with 
unshakable conviction that the ethics of 
democracy have divine sanction, when 
they make all men see the beauty and the 
truth of the world's great Democrat, Jesus 
the Christ. Shall the world be Christian- 
ized, or shall a hybrid religion, an eclectic 
patch word creed, weak and ineffective as 
such hybrids and patchworks always are, 
gradually usurp the place of a definite 
faith and leave even the m.ost virile of 
races characterless mongrels with shadow 
gods of abstract speculation? If the world 
is Christianized, it will be by reason of the 
leadership of men and women of vision 
who possess the audacity of a mighty faith 
and who grip the world with the power of 
valid vision. 

The time has come either to vindicate 
61 



THE MASTER SECRET 

the claims of Jesus Christ as the world's 
Redeemer or to admit that He is only one 
of many ''incarnations'' of varying vaUdity 
and possible uses. The challenge of the 
age to men of faith can neither be appreci- 
ated nor accepted except by men of vision. 
Now, even more than at Pentecost, God 
must pour out of His Spirit that young 
men shall see visions and old men dream 
dreams — ^visions and dreams that spring 
from the heart of the Eternal. 

Into such privilege and power the Lord 
of^life would lead all of us who are able 
and willing to be baptized with the bap- 
tism wherewith He was baptized. Service 
and Duty never pulsed with such tre- 
mendous meaning as now. To conquer 
the masterful but brutal materialism of 
the age, to command men to swing their 
splendid energies into a spiritual program, 
to inaugurate a world brotherhood and a 
world faith that shall grip vitally the con 
victions of men is an achievement in which 
the souls that are found worthy may well 
aspire to share. 

Tennyson's son, in the ''Memoir," 
says: "My father felt strongly that only 
under the inspiration of ideals, and with 
62 



VISION AND TASK 

his 'sword bathed in Heaven/ can a man 
combat the cynical indifference, the intel- 
lectual selfishness, the sloth of will, the 
utilitarian materialism of a transition age. 
* Poetry is truer than fact,' he would say. 
Guided by the voice within, the ideal soul 
looks out into the Infinite for the highest 
Ideal, and finds it nowhere realized so 
mightily as in the 'Word' who 'wrought 
with human hands the creed of creeds.'''* 
This is man's great spiritual task in 
life — to grasp the ideal, to gain the heav- 
enly vision, and then to make it imperial 
in the realm of the real: to transfigure 
stone and dust by the power of the Spirit, 
to "trouble the clod by a spark," to find 
the imprisoned idea in rough blocks of 
granite and marble, to transform sinful 
men into sons of God by faith. 

* Memoir Lord Tennyson, vol. II, p. 129. 



63 



An Ancient Psalm of Life 

The 90th Psalm, ''A Prayer of Moses, the Man of 
God." 

"Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place 

In all generations. 

Before the mountains were brought forth, 

Or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and 
the world. 

Even from everlasting to everlasting, 
Thou art God. 

Thou turnest man to destruction; 

And sayest. Return, ye children of men. 

For a thousand years in Thy sight 

Are but as yesterday when it is past. 

And as a watch in the night. 

Thou earnest them away as with a flood; 
they are as a sleep: 

In the morning they are like grass which 
groweth up. 

In the morning it flourisheth, and grow- 
eth up; 

In the evening it is cut down, and withereth. 

For we are consumed in Thine anger, 

And in Thy wrath are we troubled. 

Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, 

Our secret sins in the light of Thy coun- 
tenance. 

64 



AN ANCIENT PSALM OF LIFE 

For all our days are passed away in Thy 

wrath : 
We bring our years to an end as a tale 

that is told. 
The days of our years are threescore years 

and ten, 
Or even by reason of strength fourscore 

years; 
Yet is their pride but labor and sorrow; 
For it is soon gone, and we fly away. 
Who knoweth the power of Thine anger, 
And Thy wrath according to the fear that 

is due unto Thee? 
So teach us to number our days, 
That we may get us an heart of wisdom. 
Return, O Lord; how long? 
And let it repent Thee concerning Thy 

servants. 
O satisfy us in the morning with Thy mercy. 
That we may rejoice and be glad all our 

days. 
Make us glad according to the days wherein 

Thou hast afflicted us, 
And the years wherein we have seen evil. 
Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants. 
And Thy glory upon their children. 
And let the beauty of the Lord our God be 

upon us: 
And establish Thou the work of our hands 

upon us; 
Yea, the work of our hands establish Thou 

it." 



65 



THE MASTER SECRET 

No EAR that has ever been attuned to the 
noblest music can fail to be charmed by 
the transcendent beauty of this closing 
stanza of an immortal poem. It is the 
utterance of an old man, not grown gar- 
rulous, but grand, with the years; one who 
has passed through the vicissitudes of a 
noble career, a master mind of two re- 
ligions and two civilizations who was sum- 
moned to great leadership by the direct 
command of God, whom He met face to 
face by the burning bush and in the soli- 
tudes of Sinai. The 90th Psalm has come 
down to us through the centuries as the 
deepest heart utterance of Moses, the 
man of God. 

Out from these sublime solitudes of the 
mountain and the soul this man came 
forth with a moral grandeur of character 
and a spiritual vision that made him not 
merely the prophet and lawgiver of Israel, 
but the universal seer. 

There are men who stamp the die of 
their souls upon the thoughts of power 
that live on through history, and whose 
personalities must be reckoned with as 
the most potent of the world-forces that 
construct civilizations and religions. Such 
66 



AN ANCIENT PSALM OF LIFE 

a man was Moses. Though the chron- 
iclers had added volume to volume of 
the deeds of this man of God, it would 
have compensated but ill for the loss of 
this brief psalm which gathers up his 
philosophy and deep-souled faith. The 
great soul-utterance of Moses is here. 

Sometimes a great man has waited for 
the centuries to mature an appreciation of 
his character, until at last some poet or 
artist has arisen with genius to paint him 
in rugged grandeur and transcendent 
beauty till all men see the greatness of his 
character. 

Thus St. Gaudens has chiseled the 
Puritan, and thus Hoffman has painted 
the Christ, and thus Angelo conceived the 
greatness of Moses* character and chiseled 
it in marble. None who has ever looked 
upon Angelo's Moses can fail to have re- 
ceived a lasting impression of the ethical 
exaltation and strength, the intellectual 
power, the spiritual grandeur of this man 
of God. 

But it seems to me that this noble and 

spiritual conception of the character of 

Moses is more largely derived from the 

revelation which this psalm contains than 

67 



THE MASTER SECRET 

from all the record of his life and deeds. 
To be sure, the psalm would not be suf- 
ficient in itself, but, standing out against 
the background of the deeds and the 
words of the man, it constitutes the spir- 
itual flower of the revelation of his char- 
acter. 

Under the pressure and the discipline 
of great responsibilities, great characters 
are formed. It was under the stress and 
strain of the deathless and grim struggle 
for freedom that William of Orange grew 
into the princely and patient leader; it 
was through the unspeakable sorrow of a 
great people, the moral struggle of a 
nation, the pathos of suffering which all 
could pity but none could stay, that Lin- 
coln grew to the intellectual and moral 
grandeur that made possible and inevi- 
table his historical designation as the 
savior of his country. 

Moses was potentially great when he 
turned his back on the court of Pharaoh, 
despising the luxuries of an Egyptian 
palace in comparison with the excellence of 
a spiritual inheritance with his own race. 
It was this initial excellence of character 
that called forth the eulogy of the book of 
68 



AN ANCIENT PSALM OF LIFE 

Hebrews, '* Choosing rather to be evil en- 
treated with the people of God than to 
enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." 

Dwell with me for a moment upon this 
wondrous psalm: 

*'Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all 

generations. 
Before the mountains were brought forth, 
Or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the 

world, 
Even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art 

God." 

These utterances stand nobly by the 
side of the first word of the Sacred Scrip- 
tures, '*In the beginning God created the 
heaven and the earth." It marks the dis- 
tinguishing characteristic of the Bible. It 
lifts and defines in one great word the 
conception of the personality of God that 
overarches all uplifting and hopeful re- 
ligious faith. 

"Thou turnest man to destruction, 
And sayest. Return, ye children of men." 

We can imagine Moses turning back in 
retrospect over the forty dreary but sig- 
nificant years of the wilderness journey, a 
69 



THE MASTER SECRET 

time of moral discipline, when these He- 
brew people learned the stern lesson that 
God is in earnest and that He stands for 
moral worth, intellectual sincerity, and 
sterling achievement; that God is the 
Eternal, that His purposes persist, that 
men perish either in judgment or in 
frailty, but that 

"Through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the 
process of the suns." 

"For a thousand years in Thy sight 
Are but as yesterday when it is past, 
And as a watch in the night. 
Thou earnest them away as with a flood; they 

are as a sleep; 
In the morning they are like grass which 

groweth up. 
In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; 
In the evening it is cut down, and withereth. 
For we are consumed in Thine anger, 
And in Thy wrath are we troubled. 
Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, 
Our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance. 
For all our days are passed away in Thy wrath ; 
We bring our years to an end as a tale that is told. 
The days of our years are threescore years and ten, 
Or even by reason of strength fourscore years; 
Yet is their pride but labor and sorrow; 
For it is soon gone, and we fly away.'* 

70 



AN ANCIENT PSALM OF LIFE 

It is no matter of surprise, when we 
enter deeply into sympathy with Moses, 
that he should have expressed the feeling 
of awe at the evident judgments of God. 
And yet it is not the craven fear of a 
groping ignorance, appalled at the calami- 
ties and sorrows of life, but the utterance 
of a man who can stand forth in moral and 
spiritual dignity, and in the faith that 
there is a divine wisdom and mercy at the 
heart of the dark mysteries of life. 

"Who knoweth the power of Thine anger, 
And Thy wrath, according to the fear that is 

due unto Thee? 
So teach us to number our days, 
That we may get us an heart of wisdom." 

These considerations lead the man of 
God to a prayer of penitence and of sup- 
plication. 

" Return, O Lord; how long? 
And let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants. 
O satisfy us in the morning with Thy mercy; 
That we may rejoice and be glad all our days. 
Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou 

hast afflicted us, 
And the years wherein we have seen evil." 

And then follows the magnificent op- 
71 



THE MASTER SECRET 

tlmism, the outlook of faith, the spiritual 
mastery over life of these words of our 
psalm : 

"Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, 
And Thy glory upon their children. 
And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon 

us; 
And establish Thou the work of our hands upon 

us; 
Yea, the work of our hands, establish Thou it." 

The work and the glory and the beauty 
of God to be revealed to His children, and 
the establishment of their work in glory 
and beauty like unto His glory and beauty 
— this is Moses' prayer. 

The ^'Work of God/'— This word 
'Vork'' is fundamental in our speech. 
The root of this word, as well as the 
energy of its thought, gives vigor to the 
speech of all Germanic and Saxon peoples. 
It is '*werken'' in German. It is the 
synonym of the Greek root **energos,'' 
whence we derive the word energy. 

The work of God means the energizing 
of God. Note how Moses came to recog- 
nize the fact that God energizes or works, 
that God is actively interested in the af- 
72 



AN ANCIENT PSALM OF LIFE 

fairs of the world and of men, that God 
has purposes and plans. This vigorous 
and clear conception by Moses was no 
doubt the effect of the study of the religion 
of his people. The Hebrews had this 
characteristic excellence in all their educa- 
tion. They thoroughly drilled into their 
youth a reverent appreciation of the tra- 
ditional heroes of the race, and these tra- 
ditional heroes brought into bold relief the 
qualities of characteristic moral and spir- 
itual strength. Their Scriptures held the 
treasures of spiritual conception that have 
made them the richest inheritance of the 
human race. Thus we have in Paul's 
letters to Timothy a picture of the youth 
in characteristic Hebrew fashion learning 
the Scriptures at his mother's knee; and 
thus we have the treasured picture of the 
Christ at the age of twelve drawing near 
to the holy city and its temple with the 
spiritual exaltation that always thrills us 
with wonder as we reread the narration. 
Thus the group at Bethlehem at the time 
of the Nativity are filled with thoughts of 
God and of His great and gracious pur- 
poses for the race, and their prayers took 
shape in the language of their great 
73 



THE MASTER SECRET 

prophets and psalmists. And thus Moses, 
at his mother's knee, was taught the re- 
Hgion of his people until he saw the in- 
comparable excellence and worth of his 
spiritual inheritance by birth. 

It suggests to us a lesson that this age 
sorely needs — the priceless value of tra- 
ditional faith. We have made such as- 
tonishing advancement in material ways 
and in political achievements, and transi- 
tion in thought conceptions of life and of 
human destiny have been so rapid, and the 
molds in which faith shall cast its creeds 
have been broken and abandoned and 
formed anew with such facility that we 
are in the gravest danger of putting a 
cheap estimate upon the priceless treasures 
of traditional faith. I have lived in the 
country; I have lived in the heart of the 
great city; I have lived in the midst of 
university and college life; I have lived in 
the midst of the modern commercial world ; 
I have felt the stress and strain to which 
men are subject in the university and on 
the board of trade, on the farm and in 
the factory, and I am ready to say that 
there is nothing of such supreme value to 
us as a people and as individuals as the 
74 



AN ANCIENT PSALM OF LIFE 

deep religious faith of our fathers. In 
the crucial periods of our national history 
we have felt the saving strength of this 
faith — faith in God, and belief in His 
purposes, and trust in righteousness and 
conviction of duty. 

In the home life of our people religion 
has had a queenly place. Hardship and 
poverty, disappointment and death have 
all been met and overcome in the spirit of 
patience and of victorious hope. Men*s 
souls have withstood the grinding contact 
of the world with its eager enterprise and 
often seeming contempt for the spiritual. 
The family Bible and the family altar, the 
Church and the school have kept alive in 
men's souls ideals of purity and of duty 
and have cherished a spirit of gentleness 
and of righteousness that have kept open 
the springs of purest inspiration and of 
earnest endeavor. 

It is out from such homes that God 
has called earnest and successful workers 
in the world's great enterprises. From 
such homes have come statesmen who 
could construct political institutions that 
should endure because built in righteous- 
ness and in wisdom. It is out from such 
75 



THE MASTER SECRET 

homes that men have come with a lofty 
spirit of devotion to answer the call of the 
State and of the school and of the Church 
for high and holy service. It is in such 
homes that the call to the Christian min- 
istry has been heard and the incentive to 
an education has been felt. 

When given an opportunity to know 
the beauty and the power of the incentives 
which spring from spiritual ideals and re- 
ligious faith, young men and women have 
scorned being merely mercenary or frivo- 
lously selfish. 

The people who have lived near God 
and have cherished belief in the divine 
providence and in divine purpose have, by 
their faith, thrown a glory over life and 
relieved its hardness. It is by faith that 
men and women have been made patient 
and able to endure as ''seeing Him who is 
invisible.'' It has been my rich privilege 
to know many such homes as these of 
which I speak, and to see come out from 
them the young men and women of purity 
of life, of lofty aspirations, and of earnest 
purposes that augur well for the con- 
structive work and the spiritual achieve- 
ments of the future. 

76 



AN ANCIENT PSALM OF LIFE 

I am convinced that the blight of heart- 
atheism would be the most fatal that could 
fall upon us. A blight upon the fields 
might leave us hungry; a plague among 
the cattle and swine might leave us poor; 
but out from such hunger and such pov- 
erty we might come cleaner and stronger 
for the future: but a bhght upon the soul, 
although the harvests should remain rich 
and the cattle multiply upon a thousand 
hills, would leave us unspeakably wretched 
and miserably poor. 

''Where there is no vision the people 
perish.** The conviction which grew upon 
Moses and the Hebrew people, the con- 
viction of the moral earnestness of God, is 
of as fundamental importance to the sta- 
bility of our civilization as it was to the 
nationality of the Hebrews. This age of 
science and of marvelous material achieve- 
ment needs nothing so much as clear 
spiritual vision and a genuine and earnest 
faith. This conviction and this faith were 
wrought in Moses and in the Hebrew 
people by the stern discipline of the wilder- 
ness. Looking back upon it, Moses said, 
''Thou earnest them away as with a 
flood.*' God sloughs off the work of men 
77 



THE MASTER SECRET 

when extraneous to His purpose; **the 
wicked are like the chaff which the wind 
driveth away/' 

Men do not achieve enduring results 
save as they build in harmony with God's 
ideals. If we were standing to-day in 
Westminster Abbey, we should be im- 
pressed with two things: first, as to the 
engineering fidelity of the builders of this 
noble temple. They wrought in accord- 
ance with the plans and the specifications 
of the Infinite. Engineering is nothing 
more nor less than an apprenticeship in 
the drafting rooms of the Creator, and so 
these walls stand stanch and beautiful 
because they conform with more or less 
fidelity to the plans of the Chief Engineer; 
but, back of its engineering fidelity, you 
would be impressed with its religious and 
spiritual validity. It is a temple for 
worship. It represents and epitomizes 
the spiritual life of a great people and 
victorious race. Within its walls rest the 
dust of Britain's most illustrious sons. 
Here the generations have continuity. 
Here is fitly symbolized the ethical and 
spiritual faith of the nation, and so the 
temple stands worthily in the metropolis 
78 



AN ANCIENT PSALM OF LIFE 

of the kingdom, with perennial and noble 
significance. But if it were only a pile of 
stone and of mortar, if it had no ideals 
breathing life and beauty upon it, it would 
be of no more value than any other stone- 
pile. 

After much else has been forgotten — 
much of incident and of passion of the 
fearful civil strife that rent our country for 
four long years — the memory of Lincoln 
in humble prayer before God, with deepest 
agony of soul for his country, and yet calm 
by the sustaining power of a sublime faith, 
will be sketched upon the page of our na- 
tional history. If there is anything that 
shall endure through the centuries from 
the constructive work of these past years, 
it will be because men have built in 
harmony with the purposes of God.* 



* In the Life of Governor Andrew of Massachusetts an inci- 
dent is given which throws Ught upon the secret of reserv^ed 
strength in Lincoln's character, and the religious quality of the 
patriotism of his stanch supporters. It was in the summer of 
1862, when emancipation was being talked a great deal. One 
day Governor Andrew sent for Edward W. Kingsley and 
greeted him with the blunt words, "How do you do? I want 
you to go to Washington." Mr. Kingsley replied, "'Why, 
Governor,' said I, 'I can't go to Washington on any such 
notice as this. I am busy, and it is impossible for me to go.' 
'All my folks are serving their country,' said he; and he men- 
tioned the various services the members of his staff were en- 
gaged in, and said with emphasis, 'Somebody must go to 
Washington ... I command you to go.' 'Well,' said I, 
' Governor, put it in ths.t way and I shall go, of course.' 'There 
is something going on,' he remarked. !This is a momentous 

79 



THE MASTER SECRET 

There is in this prayer of Moses a 
petition for an awakening capacity. '*Let 
thy work appear unto thy servants, and 
they glory unto their children/' It seems 
that Moses himself needed to be startled 
into an appreciation of the divine presence, 
as at the burning bush, and again, dis- 
ciplined through forty long years in the 
mountain silences, to the capacity or 
power of listening to the divine voice that 
should summon him to great tasks and 
high duty. And the people under his 
leadership needed also the long discipline 
of the wilderness before they acquired the 



time.* He turned suddenly toward me and said, 'You believe 
in prayer, don't you?' I said, 'Why, of course.' 'Then let 
us pray;' and he knelt right down at the chair that was placed 
there; we both kneeled down, and I never heard such a prayer 
in all my life. I never was so near the throne of God, except 
when my mother died, as I was then. I said to the Governor, 
* ... I will start this afternoon for Washington.' I soon 
found out that emancipation was in everybody's mouth, and 
when I got to Washington, and called upon Sumner, he began 
to talk emancipation. He asked me to go and see the Presi- 
dent, and tell him how the people of Boston and New England 
regarded it. I went to the White House that evening and met 
the President. We first talked about everything but emanci- 
pation, and finally he asked me what I thought about emanci- 
pation. I told him what I thought about it, and said that 
Governor Andrew was so far interested in it that I had no 
doubt he had sent me there to post the President in regard 
to what the class of people I met in Boston and New York 
thought of it, and then I repeated to him, as I had previously 
to Sumner, this prayer of the Governor's, as well as I could 
remember it. The President said, * When we have the Governor 
of Massachusetts to send us troops in the way he has, and 
when we have him to utter such prayers for us, I have no 
doubt that we shall succeed.'" — Pearson's Life of John A, 
Andrew, vol. II, p. 47. 

80 



AN ANCIENT PSALM OF LIFE 

spiritual education to co-operate with the 
divine purposes. 

There is appalling moral waste in the 
world. Waste because men work at cross- 
purposes with God, and their work comes 
to naught; and men work at cross-pur- 
poses with God either through willfulness 
or ignorance — through willfulness when, 
like undisciplined children, they fancy 
their own way and will to be better than 
God's way and God's will, and through 
ignorance, from lack of spiritual vision 
and spiritual faith, they become little and 
provincial in the great Universe of God. 

Talleyrand was dining with Wellington 
when word came that Napoleon was dead. 
''What an event,'' they all cried. '' 'Tis 
no event," said Talleyrand, '* 'T is but a 
piece of news;" and Talleyrand was right. 
Napoleon's genius was prostituted to a 
selfish ambition. He is memorable in 
history because of the temporary dis- 
turbance which he made among the powers 
of Europe, because of his colossal schemes, 
because of his military genius, and because 
through him multitudes perished in battle, 
because he impoverished a nation. France 
has never yet recovered from the waste 
^ 81 



THE MASTER SECRET 

and the exhaustion of the Napoleonic 
regime. Grant would not visit the tomb 
of Napoleon, such was his repugnance and 
righteous indignation at the character and 
the career of the Corsican. Napoleon 
must be recorded in history as a mere 
provincial. His work does not endure. 

Moreover, besides the necessity of 
working in harmony with God, if man*s 
work shall endure, there is the necessity 
for sincere and genuine and pure char- 
acter if men would thus be treasured in 
memory along with the good causes which 
they have advocated. Gladstone is quoted 
by Morley as saying of Parnell and of Par- 
nell's brazenness in the face of the ex- 
posure of his personal impurity, that Par- 
nell represented ^*the unruffled continuity 
of stained leadership;*' and through the 
moral judgment of the people of England 
and of Ireland Parnell has been branded 
and was obliged at last to retire ignobly. 

Browning, in Paracelsus, speaks of one 
upon whom the moral judgment of God 
was wrought like this: 

" ... No mean trick 
He left untried, and truly well-nigh wormed 
All traces of God's finger out of him: 
Then died, grown old." 

82 



AN ANCIENT PSALM OF LIFE 

And in Browning's verse, such an one 
is contrasted with another who 

** Never turned his back, but marched breast-for- 
ward. 
Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, 
Wrong would triumph. 

Hold we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake." 

To such faith and such optimism those 
alone have right who put themselves in 
tune with the Infinite. 

Longfellow makes Angelo say to a de- 
tractor : 

*'He says I show mankind that I am wanting 
In piety and religion, in proportion 
As I profess perfection in my art. 
Profess perfection ! Why 't is only men 
Like Bugiardini who are satisfied 
With what they do. I never am content, 
But always see the labors of my hand 
Fall short of my conception." 

And to have held the ideal, and to have 
been patiently devoted and not to have 
debased the conceptions of the soul, this 
at last is the final reward. 

''Let the beauty of the Lord our God 
be upon us." 

83 



Christianity and the 
Supernatural* 

Method. — When one contemplates the 
heavy strain that is put upon the faith of 
people who listen to a series of apologetic 
or defensive lectures, and who read them, 
it is enough to make one hesitate about 
adding another ounce to the burden. 
Somewhere I have read of a verger v/ho 
said he sat through twenty series of Bamp- 
ton lectures on ^*The Defense of Faith" 
and that he still remained a humble be- 
liever. Not all humble believers, however, 
are proof against the perils of an attempt 
to defend their faith. Too elaborate and 
careful defensive operations usually sug- 
gest one of three things: an apprehension 
of weakness within that which is to be de- 
fended, a fear of the attacking force, or a 
McClellan-like power of constructive imag- 
ination that distrusts its own strength 
while quadrupling the actual strength of 
the enemy. 

* Republished by permission from the Methodist Review, 

84 



CHRISTIANITY— SUPERNATURAL 

So the role of an apologist is not an 
easy, but a difficult one. And never more 
difficult than to-day, when all apologetics 
and the very attitude of defense of faith 
are discounted and discredited to begin 
with as savoring of dogmatism and lacking 
the scientific spirit of fearless freedom in 
all inquiry. 

Yet it may well be asked whether the 
positive attitude and the apologetic method 
may not be quite as legitimate and quite 
as necessary in arriving at truth as the 
attitude of neutrality. A cold-blooded 
analytical method may miss something es- 
sential. A corpse is not a living organism, 
and the anatomist, in his study of struc- 
tures and analysis of tissues and gases, 
should not forget that he is after all only 
studying a magnificent ruin, a splendid 
debris. Life has accomplished its finer 
purpose and has fled. The anatomist is 
not in the presence of the mystery of life — 
he is in a morgue. The scientific method 
is quite right — the method of severe anal- 
ysis and testing of evidence, and loyalty 
to the facts regardless of preconceptions 
or wishes or prejudices or consequences — 
the scientific method is of incalculable 
85 



THE MASTER SECRET 

value; but there is always danger that 
some essential factors shall be omitted in 
the calculation, that something important 
shall be overlooked. And in the effort to 
estimate the things of faith and to account 
for faith and to assay the spirit, the scien- 
tific method under the dominance of a 
prejudice for m.aterialistic or mechanical, 
or even physiological theories, may lead 
the investigator to overlook something es- 
sential, to forget the soul. And the scien- 
tific investigator may become impatient 
an,d fretful when urged to take into ac^ 
count the factors which he has omitted in 
his calculations. 

Years ago Joseph Cook told us how 
Professor Tyndall, on the Alps in company 
with a friend, was requested to tell what 
is behind the keyboard of the nerves in 
man, or, in other words, what causes in the 
substance of the brain the molecular mo- 
tions which are supposed to be the basis 
of thought, choice, and emotion. Not 
able to give any satisfactory answer, Tyn- 
dall at last burst out with these frank 
words: ^*I view nature, existence, the 
universe as the keyboard of a pianoforte. 
What came before the bass I do not know 
86 



CHRISTIANITY— SUPERNATURAL 

and I do not care. What comes after the 
treble I equally little know or care. The 
keyboard, with its white and black keys, 
is mine to study/' 

Now, we may not quarrel with Pro- 
fessor Tyndall, or with any one else who 
frankly limits his researches to the black 
and white keys, but there are those who 
do care about something else. And for 
the larger purposes of truth and life, we 
do object to the closing of the door in our 
faces or to the arrogance of dogmatic 
negation that pronounces worthless all 
that does not come within its own accepted 
categories. As between the dogmatism of 
negation and the dogmatism of belief, I 
am disposed to the opinion that the dog- 
matism of belief may be in a better way 
to reach the ** substance of things not 
seen.'' In other words, may there not be 
as great a degree of open-mindedness to 
the light of truth in an attitude and by a 
method that takes into account the data 
of spirit, and is not perforce limited to the 
mechanical categories of physical science, 
as in the attitude and the method that are 
so limited? 

It is now some years since Gold win 
87 



THE MASTER SECRET 

Smith, in his *' Study of History," wrote 
this warning: 

"I see no impossibility, but an extreme likeli- 
hood, that physical science, having lately achieved 
so much, should arrogate more than she has achieved 
and that a mock science should thus have been set 
up where the domain of real science ends." 

And again he says: 

"Why may there not be a whole sphere of ex- 
istence, embracing the relations and the communion 
between God and man, with which natural science 
has no concern, and in which her dictation is as 
impertinent as the dictation of theology in physics." 

This is precisely what has happened. 
So both Science and Theology are now 
quits. Theology did for a long time under- 
take to dictate in physics, and Science has 
undertaken to dictate in Theology. Each 
has tried to apply its own categories in 
the field of the other. In the supposed 
interest of the authority of the Bible, for 
example, Theology assumed that Biblical 
statements about the creation of the world 
must be good scientific geology. To ques- 
tion the accuracy of any Biblical state- 
ment about nature or the processes of 
88 



CHRISTIANITY— SUPERNATURAL 

nature has been thought to endanger its 
authority upon other matters, including 
spiritual and ethical principles. If the 
Bible says that the sun stood still, then it 
stood still. To question the authority of 
Scripture upon a statement of a physical 
fact might jeopardize its authority when 
it says, in the words of Jesus, that the first 
law of life is to love God and the second 
to love our neighbors. Theories of Bib- 
lical inspiration and of authority have 
made it seem necessary to defend the 
scientific accuracy of the account of Crea- 
tion. If Moses is the author, then he 
must be made out a good geologist as well 
as a law-giver in religion and morals. 
And so ecclesiastical authority makes a 
Galileo recant, pronounces in the name of 
religion upon scientific theories like that of 
evolution, seeks to extend the authority 
of Scripture, however erroneously inter- 
preted, over the realm of Science. This 
is an impertinence. It is no small gain 
that the sphere of the legitimate authority 
of Scripture has been limited and defined. 
The opening verse of Scripture ought 
to have saved men from much blundering 
as to the nature and purpose of all Scrip- 
89 



THE MASTER SECRET 

ture, if they had heeded its tone and 
accent. ''In the beginning, God created 
the heavens and the earth." A sublime 
religious conception! It has held before 
men*s minds through the ages the idea of 
a personal Creator. Its purpose is re- 
ligious, not scientific. Under the light and 
the power of that conception, it became 
exceedingly difficult even in superstitious 
and idolatrous times for men — Hebrew 
men — to fall into idolatry. And this was 
its purpose. How entirely inapt and use- 
less to have substituted, even if it had 
been conceivably possible, a scientific 
treatise on the physical processes of the 
evolution of the world and life! Here is 
a poem — a religious poem — whether by 
Moses or handed down from remoter ages, 
of the sublime religious conception of a Per- 
sonal Creator whom men ought to worship 
and obey. 

But Science, too, has been dogmatic 
and over-reaching. In the name of Science 
the most dogmatic positions have been 
taken limiting knowledge to the categories 
of physical science. God and the soul 
must yield evidence of reality in the test- 
tubes and on the balances of the physical 
90 



CHRISTIANITY— SUPERNATURAL 

laboratories or cease to hold respectable 
place among the verities. 

Dualism. — It has seemed to earnest- 
thinking men intolerable that there should 
be two realms or worlds set against each 
other, disparate and irreconcilable; a 
world of the spirit and a physical world. 
Such an opposition could not stand. Kant 
worked out, in his critique of ''Pure 
Reason'' and in his critique of ''Practical 
Reason,'' two separate worlds, and thought 
it possible for a man to live in both at 
once. But upon his death, and before, 
men set to work to try and reconcile and 
unify the two. 

One way of reconciliation is to adopt 
frankly the mechanical conception of the 
world, including human Hfe. This will 
stop the voice of prayer as it did with 
Romanes. The mechanism of the physical 
universe grinds on remorselessly. It is 
idle to pray. We are ourselves a part of 
this mechanism. If we could know all 
that might conceivably be known about 
the hereditary influences that have con- 
verged in any individual life, and could 
know all that might conceivably be known 
91 



THE MASTER SECRET 

about the influences of environment, we 
should be able, with the certainty of a 
mathematical demonstration, to determine 
exactly what kind of a man he must be, 
what the things he would think, and what 
the things he would do. Freedom of choice 
becomes a fancy. It is the moth thinking 
itself free in flight, but destined, inevi- 
tably, to drop into the flame. And so men 
like John Stewart Mill become disciples of 
Necessity, as absolutely as the ancient 
Greeks became the helpless subjects of 
Fate. 

But this mechanical conception did 
have the merit of unity. A mechanical 
and necessitated world was better, so far 
as mental poise was concerned, than a 
dual and distracted and hopelessly con- 
tradictory one. 

Over against the theory of mechanical 
necessity has stood an equally radical 
spiritualism, that ignores the physical as 
having any reality. We may admire the 
heroic fortitude of him who will have unity 
even at the cost of denying reality to the 
stone against which he stubs his toe, but 
few of us can rise to that height of imagi- 
nary mastery over tough facts. 
92 



CHRISTIANITY— SUPERNATURAL 

Use of Supernatural. — And now I 
wish to call attention to what is really the 
thesis of this lecture — the essentially spir- 
itual character of the Christian religion 
and the use which has been made of the 
supernatural, including the miraculous, to 
emphasize the fact of spirit. 

Christianity is essentially a religion of 
spiritual freedom. The marginal reading 
of John 3: 8 is direct instead of figurative: 

''The Spirit breatheth where he listeth, and thou 
hearest his voice, but knoweth not whence he 
cometh or whither he goeth. So is every one that is 
born of the Spirit.'* 

Christianity is the religion of spirit and 
personality; of life and love; of freedom 
and immortality. These are the great 
words of Scripture — the keynotes of Chris- 
tianity. 

But in striking these keynotes, use 
has been made of the supernatural. 

It is not my purpose to enter into a 
discussion of miracles, much less to under- 
take a detailed defense of Biblical miracles. 
But I do want you to see the practical use 
which is made of them here in the Bible. 
Everywhere the supremacy of mind, of 
93 



THE MASTER SECRET 

spirit is emphasized, and at times tre- 
mendously emphasized by the presence of 
miracle. The miraculous is really much 
less in proportion in the Bible than we 
are accustomed to think. The few, the 
relatively very few, instances given, how- 
ever, serve to emphasize the presence and 
the supremacy of Spirit. 

Some one has said recently that the 
Biblical miracles are an embarrassment to 
faith, a burden that Christian belief would 
like to be rid of if it could. But let us 
remember that the Bible was not con- 
ceived solely for us in this scientific age, 
full of conceit at its own superior wisdom, 
strongly biased and prejudiced by the 
dominant theories that speak in the name 
and by the authority of Modern Science. 
For thousands of years Science was not 
dreamed of. But men had to live their 
lives in very real contact with this stub- 
born physical world and the presence of 
spiritual verities as well. How should 
they find intellectual peace in a conception 
of unity, and where should rest be found 
for the w^eary spirit? The method of reve- 
lation is least of all any attempt at pre- 
mature science. How confusing and use- 
94 



CHRISTIANITY— SUPERNATURAL 

less all that would have beenl But men 
are taught the fact of Divine Personality 
and the fact of human personality. The 
spirit is challenged to conscious freedom. 
The soul is commanded to a mighty faith. 

And there were ages when it would 
seem that nothing could have driven this 
challenge home to the souls of men like the 
presence of miracle. We may receive that 
challenge more effectively by other means, 
but for those ages of formative faith, and 
with a radically different intellectual hor- 
izon and atmosphere, this was the most 
effective means. 

And it accomplished this purpose 

Character of Biblical Miracles. — 
While some of the recorded Biblical mir- 
acles may be of much less apparent sig- 
nificance than others, their character is in 
general one of great dignity and effective- 
ness. 

Let us take a single illustration, that of 
Elijah and the priests of Baal. It is a 
time of decline in nobler religious concep- 
tions and nobler living. From the court 
to the peasant this half-rude people were 
become religiously sodden. They had lost 
95 



THE MASTER SECRET 

the inspiring vision of God of earlier days. 
Ahab, the king, had married a Phoenician 
princess, who introduced Baal-worship. 
A crisis had come — one of the great crises 
of history. Spiritual and ethical religion 
was in danger of perishing. There is no 
more striking figure in history than that of 
Elijah the prophet as he stands forward to 
meet this crisis 

The setting is dramatic. This man of 
Jehovah, with his rough skin mantle and 
flowing locks and rugged grandeur of char- 
acter, challenges Baal-worship to the kind 
of test that to that age would be most 
decisive. Let the God that answers by 
fire be God. The priests of Baal prepare 
their altar and their sacrifice, and work 
themselves into a frenzy throughout the 
entire day in calling upon their god to 
answer by fire; and he does not answer. 
Elijah taunts them, and we feel the terrible 
scorn of his taunt. ''Elijah mocked them 
and said, Cry aloud; for he is a god; 
either he is musing or he is gone aside, or 
he is on a journey, or perad venture he 
sleepeth and must be awakened. '* Then he 
calmly rebuilds the altar of Jehovah and 
lays the sacrifice and saturates it with 
96 



CHRISTIANITY— SUPERNATURAL 

water, utters a few brief words of petition, 
and lightning falls and consumes the sacri- 
fice. And then come the refreshing tor- 
rents of rain upon the parched earth. 

I want you to think of the use which 
is here made of the supernatural. It is 
the setting and accompaniment of a 
mighty but typical conflict. A pure re- 
ligion and pure ethics are at stake. It is 
the issue between the high and the low, 
the pure and the base, truth and falsehood. 
The occasion is worthy the means. 

As you listen to the oratorio of Elijah — 
a greater musical conception in its unity, 
dignity, tragic power, and the force of 
interpretation than even the *' Messiah'' — 
you find yourself at its close in a temper 
of mind to exclaim, ^^It must have been 
so. If there was no such setting of fire 
and tempest, of defeat and of victory, 
there ought to have been. It is worthy.'' 

The supernatural is used to the worthiest 
ends. 

Indeed, must we not say that, so far 

as we can see, no other means could have 

been so efficient or sufficiently efficient. 

Miracles are signs. And they uniformly in 

Bible use signify the supremacy of Spirit, 
7 97 



THE MASTER SECRET 

the truth of religion, the fact of personality, 
the reality of God and of the soul. 
Throughout the Bible records we are left 
always in the presence of the sublime con- 
viction that '*God and the soul stand 
sure.'* 

Dogmatic Negation. — Matthew Ar- 
nold begins his discussion of miracles by 
the statement that '* miracles do not hap- 
pen,'' and then asks how much evidence 
it would take to make us believe that a 
centaur was seen trotting down Regent 
Street. As if there were any conceivable 
significance to a centaur trotting down 
Regent Street as compared with Biblical 
miracles. The closure of mind to the 
deeper significance of the truth to which 
the supernatural has often borne most 
telling witness by the dogmatism of nega- 
tion, which starts out by saying, what 
can not be is one of the most singular and 
most serious phases of modern speculative 
thinking. It is hopekvssly skeptical, not 
merely of the supernatural witness to the 
deeper truths of the spirit and of freedom, 
but of those deeper truths themselves. 

Of course it is easy to retort that 
98 



CHRISTIANITY— SUPERNATURAL 

Matthew Arnold does not know every- 
thing, and that his personal experience is 
not universal or even typically so, and 
that it is immodest for him to assume to 
know what can and what can not happen. 

**This question, whether God can work miracles, 
seriously treated, would be impious if it were not 
absurd," said Rousseau, "and it would be doing too 
much honor to him who would answer in the nega- 
tive to punish him; it would be sufficient to keep 
him in custody." 

Miracle and the Reign of Law. — 
But the difficulty lies deeper. What 
Matthew Arnold really means is some- 
thing to which most of us would subscribe 
with profound respect, namely, that Nature 
is rational and orderly and that freaks do 
not occur contrary to the established laws 
of Nature. The physicist feels this pro- 
found confidence in the order of Nature, 
the reign of law. The chemist and the 
biologist pursue their extremely interesting 
researches into the still unknown with ab- 
solute confidence in the reliability of 
Nature. This is the sine qua non of re- 
search. This is sanity. 

And we have a right to ask whether it 
99 



THE MASTER SECRET 

IS reasonable or probable that this rational 
order ever is or ever has been broken or 
suspended or changed for moral or re- 
ligious reasons. The answer to this ques- 
tion will depend largely upon the relative 
importance attached to spiritual ends. 
Is it conceivably worth while, if such 
means should appear most effective, to 
suspend or change the natural order that 
telling emphasis might be put upon spir- 
itual freedom? If we conceive that men 
emerge into their spiritual birthright as 
sons of God, not by involuntary and ef- 
fortless evolution, but by such labor of 
spirit and such mighty conquests as make 
all lesser struggles seem trivial; by age- 
long effort, full of tragedy and pathos, but 
never ceasing, then it may appear rational 
that the whole creation should travel and 
groan together for the redemption of the 
sons of God. An appreciative estimate of 
the supernatural does not rest upon child- 
ishness, but ultimately upon the sublimest 
conceptions of human progress. 

Doctor Gordon, in his '* Religion and 

Miracle,'' just published, has taken the 

ground that religion, and in particular the 

Christian religion, is independent of mir- 

100 



CHRISTIANITY— SUPERNATURAL 

acle. That, though miracles should all be 
explained away, the essential things in 
Christian faith would still remain; that 
in no important sense is spiritual truth, 
or the truth of the soul's relationship with 
God, which is the essence of religion, really 
dependent upon physical phenomena of 
the supernatural. He reckons himself 
free from any bondage of fear or concern 
as to the final estimate of miracle. 

While there is a valuable assertion in 
this attitude of the essentially spiritual 
character of religion, it seems to me to go 
needlessly far in cheapening the estimate 
which we may and should have of the 
utility of the supernatural in aiding to 
bring about the very spiritual emancipa- 
tion which Doctor Gordon so justly prizes. 
In a series of lectures upon the general 
subject, **What is Christianity?" Pro- 
fessor Adolph Harnack has said : 

"While we are convinced that what takes place 
or happens in space and time is subject to the gen- 
eral laws 'of nature,* the religious man — if religion 
really permeates him and is something more than a 
belief in the religion of others — is certain that he 
is not shut up within a blind and brutal course of 
Nature, but that this course of Nature serves 
101 



THE MASTER SECRET 

higher ends, or, as it may be, that some inner and 
divine power can help us to so encounter it as that 
everything must necessarily be for the best. This 
experience, which I might express in one word as 
the ability to escape from the power and the service 
of transitory things, is always felt afresh to be a 
miracle each time that it occurs; it is inseparable 
from every higher religion and, were it to be sur- 
rendered, religion would be at an end." 

Christ's Assertion of Freedom. — 
The assertion of spiritual freedom makes 
Christ the great emancipator, and never 
was that accent upon personality and 
freedom more needed and more welcome 
than at this hour. In the nineteenth 
century men put upon Herschel's tomb 
the words: 

"He broke through the barriers of the heavens 
and added a universe to our knowledge." 

Of Jesus, the twentieth century must 
say, as did the first: 

"He brought life and immortality to light." 

Jesus has taught us wherein freedom 
consists. It lies not only in superior excel- 
lence of intellect, in power of will, suprem- 
acy of character, but in spiritual conscious- 
ness of personality. 

102 



CHRISTIANITY— SUPERNATURAL 

The crowning miracle of history is the 
Person of Christ. There stands His por- 
trait in the Gospels, drawn with the 
simplicity, sincerity, and directness of art- 
less men. No creation of imaginative 
genius is like that. And the evangelists 
were not geniuses. There is no touch of 
color here. All is transparent. The 
divine beauty of this picture is its own 
complete evidence. 

Ruskin says that simplicity and calm 
characterize all that is great in art. And 
the deeds of power which Christ wrought, 
like the words which He spoke, have about 
them a simplicity and calm worthy the 
^'Son of God.'' He stilled the tempest 
and raised the dead, and Himself rose 
from the grave. If we could see clearly and 
broadly enough, we should understand that 
such deeds were divinely appropriate ex- 
pressions of His personality. 

And what shall we say of the super- 
natural as used by Jesus Himself. Was 
there ever a more fitting use of means than 
the use Jesus made of the supernatural? 

Christ's Use of Miracles. — We must 
feel His reserve. He would do no mighty 
103 



THE MASTER SECRET 

works in the presence of the unbelief of 
men merely to appease their curiosity; 
He would not lift His strength to shield 
Himself from any blow or to escape any 
suffering; He would not turn stones into 
bread to appease His own hunger; He 
would not push the bitter cup from His 
own lips in Gethsemane even though in 
exquisite agony He prayed that it might 
pass. Jesus used the supernatural much 
less in proportion to His life's activities 
than we ordinarily suppose. 

But He did in acts of singular appro- 
priateness and power accent the truth He 
taught by supernatural deeds that will for- 
ever cause that truth to stand distinct and 
singular. 

Jesus was Himself the miracle of his- 
tory. Have we not already come to the 
time when evolution itself leads to the 
logical necessity of the Son of God, the 
Perfect Man, God in the flesh? 

Instead of shrinking from the loftiest 
and final manifestation of the super- 
natural in Jesus Christ, we may and we 
should rise rather to an appreciation of 
the appropriateness and the efficiency of 
the supernatural in Christ, and to the end 
104 



CHRISTIANITY— SUPERNATURAL 

that men may be lifted forever to the 
dignity and freedom of sons of God. 

Jesus raised the dead. Nothing less 
would be sufficient. He did not 'Mabble'* 
and *' trifle'' with the supernatural! He 
rose from the dead, A Christ who did not 
and could not would not be a sufficient 
Christ for you or me. He brought life and 
immortality to light. No less a revelation 
would change the accent of the words 
spoken at all open graves, ''Ashes to ashes, 
dust to dust," and transform them from 
frozen clods of earth that bruise the 
broken heart of grief to a benediction that 
falls sweetly from the skies. With such a 
Christ as the New Testament gives us, in 
His integrity we can rest with assurance 
upon His own confidence in God when He 
bids His disciples ''believe in God" and 
"believe in Me." 

The spiritual enterprise of the ages is 
to get this accent and emphasis upon the 
fact of personality and the fact of freedom. 
And there is no place where this accent 
and this freedom can so certainly be found 
as by the side of Jesus Christ on the open 
mountain and in the crowded street. 
Hamilton Mabie says, "We can no more 
105 



THE MASTER SECRET 

get away from the books of power than 
we can get away from the stars." And 
we can not, if we would, get away from 
Jesus the Christ. '*I, if I be Hfted up," 
He said, ''will draw all men unto Me." 
By the deepest law of the intellect man 
must turn to Him. For He demonstrates 
the unity of the world of experience; but 
a unity that at the same time satisfies a 
still deeper law, a unity with spiritual 
freedom. Philosophers, scientists, and 
little children alike and together can join 
hands and walk out with Him under the 
open skies and breathe the atmosphere of 
freedom. ^'Consider the lilies," ''Behold 
the birds of the air." And yet His atti- 
tude is not merely that of complacency. 
He can and He does touch the leprous 
flesh and it becomes as the flesh of a little 
child. He can and He does tear away 
the tough curtains that have hidden eyes 
from the light of the day, and the blind 
see. And it is all the most appropriate 
and the most impressive in suggestion 
of His unique place in the main and cen- 
tral spiritual enterprise of the ages — the 
setting of men free, the putting of the 

100 



CHRISTIANITY— SUPERNATURAL 

accent and emphasis upon the fact of per- 
sonality, the supremacy of spirit. 

Need of Spiritual Psychology. — 
And how we need this Divine Champion 
of the Spirit now! We are but just emerg- 
ing from a kind of nightmare of material- 
istic philosophy. In the name of exact 
science, even psychology, the science of 
the mind, of man's distinctive life, is most 
largely concerned with physiology. It is 
the brain and the nerves and the physio- 
logical phenomena that accompany mental 
processes of thought and will and emotion 
that are being studied and classified and 
interpreted, and especially as to their his- 
torical evolution from simpler and lower 
manifestations. Back of man the animal 
antecedent, and back of the animal the 
polyp, and back of the polyp star-dust 
and atoms. Psychology has its physio- 
logical laboratories. And there is the 
gravest danger that men lose the sense and 
the conviction of any reality save that 
which physical apparatus can test and 
prove. The time is ripe for a new and 
deeper and more adequate psychology than 
that now most in vogue, the psychology 

107 



THE MASTER SECRET 

that shall make some worthy account of 
the "psyche'' or spirit. 

I can not better close this necessarily 
fragmentary discussion of a vitally im- 
portant question than by a word from 
Tennyson : 

*'This main miracle that Thou art Thou, 
With power on Thine own act and on the 
world." 



108 



OCT 8 W18 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. | 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide j 

Treatment Date: April 2005 J 

PreservationTechnologies ; 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION J 
1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive | 

Cranberry Township, PA 16066 1 

(724)779-2111 ^ 



v\^^^^^ ^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 088 586 1 # 



,#^ 






mi 



